Opinion
On Friday, June 28th, 2024, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and overturned Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. While the Loper Bright case dealt with the federal government’s regulation of commercial herring fishing, overruling the Court’s Chevron decision will have far-reaching consequences for federal firearm regulations.
Before Friday, under so-called “Chevron deference” federal courts have deferred to any “permissible” reading of a federal statute made by a federal agency if the court determined that the intent of Congress under the statute was unclear. This rule led federal courts to uphold many federal regulations that bore little resemblance to the statutes they were supposedly implementing.
It is also antithetical to America’s constitutional structure for an executive branch agency to be given the power to create binding interpretations of the laws they are charged with enforcing. As Chief Justice Roberts put it in the Court’s majority opinion, “[t]he Framers … envisioned that the final ‘interpretation of the laws’ would be ‘the proper and peculiar province of the courts.’”
In recent years most federal gun control has been created through regulations implemented by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”). This includes ATF’s treatment of all pistols with attached stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, ATF’s redefinition of the term “frame or receiver” to effectively ban parts used by hobbyist gun builders, and ATF’s attempt to expand who must be licensed as a gun dealer before selling firearms.
Thanks to the Court’s decision to reject Chevron deference, all of these ATF rules are now on very questionable legal footing.
In fact, the Court’s decision to depart from agency deference has already played a role in the invalidation of a federal firearm regulation. When the Court rejected ATF’s ban on bump fire stocks two weeks ago, it notably did not give any deference to ATF’s interpretation of the term “machinegun.” Many Court watchers (correctly) assumed this meant the Court would be overturing or limiting Chevron when it released its decision in Loper Bright.
Gun owners, and all freedom-loving Americans, should look forward to a future where our liberties are (at least a little) less subject to the whims of unelected federal bureaucrats.
About NRA-ILA:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
No, what is REALLY questionable, is the legal system itself!! We have men and women in it who to a more or lesser degree, are ALL compromised in some way or another! We have VERY fallible ordinary people with no more intelligence than the average man or woman on the streets that you may bump into while out on a stroll. So why should we have to defer to their insane whims and caprices? Why should we put our fate and fortunes in the care of people who don’t really care what happens to us, just so long as they… Read more »
Time to DEFUND the ‘UNELECTED ATF Bureaucracy’ RICO CABAL. DELETE EVERY ILLEGALLY DREAMED UP “rule and regulation” from EVERY Law Enforcement Agency/Organization across America and DISALLOW any use of these “rules and regulation. Then DISBAND the ILLEGALLY FORMED “ATF BUREAUCRACY” which was made by a MEMO from an ‘irs DIRECTOR’!!
Bbbn
And all the little lefty big government promoters lost their minds. Love it.
It’s about time that the ATF and other liberal federal cabals are stepped on and forced to get back into their lane!
Excellent SCOTUS decision that helps neuter the Bureaucratic Tyranny currently operating within the US government.
What will be even better is when the Federal Registry Rules process gets its nuts cut off too. F’n congress needs to get off its ass and start doing the job it was constitutionally intended to do instead of passing its job along to the alphabet agency bureaucrats. While congress lines their pockets with corrupt schemes for cash, e.g. Pelosi, Biden, and McConnell to start the list.